Debate Thread III

Pretty surprised to hear that quote exuberating over the "strength" of the Chinese government in putting down the student uprising of 1989.

Debate Summary: Without Rubio and Cruz going on a steady attack against Trump, the effort to delegitimize him stopped almost completely. They treated him as a typical politician, someone they just disagree with here or there, which is precisely the thing that got him into first place before.

If you're not actively deligitimizing Trump, you're legitimizing him. And I fear that's what happened tonight.

They also seemed to forget how you beat Trump: You just ask him questions. You ask him to elaborate. If he says "I can think of many, many leaders who are strong," you say, "Please name some of those leaders." If he says there are many, many polls which show him beating Hillary, you say: "What are those polls, when are they from, and what did they say?"

Trump's liability -- and his gift, of course -- is that he's a bullshit artist. A bullshit artist can pass the first posing of the question. Anyone can bullshit for 90 seconds on virtually any topic on earth.

The trick to beating the bullshit artist is to get him to keep talking from the 91st second to the 180th. "Do go on; I'm fascinated to hear all you know about this topic."

They begin repeating themselves and making it plain they don't know what they're talking about.

Eh. Life is a series of disappointments culminating in the failure to even remain alive. All hope is vanity. We're proper f***ed, as they say in British gangster movies.

Marco Rubio Wrote The Playbook On How to Beat Trump... And then he threw it away.

I get why he backed off on personal attacks. Personally, I liked Shecky Rubio. I thought he was funny.

But apparently some people didn't like that. The reason people didn't like that is the reason for why most people think the things they do: Because people are idiots.

But even if Marco drops the Shecky Rubio act, why give up on the substantive angle of the attack?

Why give up on the brilliant "I'll give you my time to answer this question" gambit?

That was awesome. And it worked spectacularly. That's what caused Trump to start babbling about "getting rid of the lines" (makes circles with his fingers).